Laser cutter owners may find this online box design tool which [Jon] built quite useful. It's got a few more joint options than the Inkscape box design add-on does. Apparently the US Navy has the ability to bring down drones in a flaming pile of laser-caused death. [Thanks Joshua] [Michail] has been working on a transistor-based full adder. He's posted a Spice simulation if you want to learn … [Read more...]
ATX Raspi is a smart power source for Raspberry Pi
May 19, 2013 By 21 Comments
One aspect of the Raspberry Pi that has always challenged us is the power supply. It was a great idea to power the board from a standard micro-USB port because economy of scale makes phone chargers (even in the 1A range necessary for stable operation of the RPi) cheap and easy to acquire. The thing we miss is the ability to power the device on and off using the built-in hardware. The quandary … [Read more...]
Wireless microcontroller/PC interface for $3
May 19, 2013 By 35 Comments
Sending data from a microcontroller to a PC usually requires some sort of serial connection, either through fiddly on-chip USB, FTDI chips, or expensive radio ICs. [Scott] didn't want to deal with this when creating a network of wireless temperature sensors, so he hacked up a few cheap 433 MHz radio transmitters and receivers to transmit data to a PC for about $3. After sensor data is … [Read more...]
Controlling a terminal with Google Voice
May 19, 2013 By 10 Comments
For how awesome Google Voice is, we're surprised we haven't seen this before. [Steve] is using Google Voice to run commands on just about any Linux box. Google Voice doesn't have an official API, and existing unofficial APIs weren't up to snuff for [Steve]'s project. He ended up writing his own that checks his unread message inbox every minute and looks for new text messages beginning with the … [Read more...]
FPGA plays Mario like a champ
May 19, 2013 By 7 Comments
This isn't an FPGA emulating Mario Bros., it's an FPGA playing the game by analyzing the video and sending controller commands. It's a final project for an engineering course. The ECE5760 Advanced FPGA course over at Cornell University that always provides entertainment for us every time the final projects are due. Developed by team members [Jeremy Blum], [Jason Wright], and [Sima Mitra], the … [Read more...]
Robot air hockey championship as a final project
May 18, 2013 By 13 Comments
My final project is build a robot that plays air hockey? Where do I sign up? Apparently you get yourself a seat in ECE496 at Clemson University. They have been using the concept as a final project for at least a couple of years. [Abe Froman] was on the winning design team this year and he's showing off his robot and some winning games it played. His robot is in the foreground. It uses a … [Read more...]
Just put your lips together to turn on a lamp
May 18, 2013 By 13 Comments
The inlaid image is a controller board which [Limpkin] developed to add whistle control as a home automation option. It has an effective range of around fifteen feet and does a good job of detecting whistles from many different people. Here is one of the test subjects (captured with a hidden camera) whistling to the white LED lamp in order to switch it on. The board is quite small. [Limpkin] … [Read more...]
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